Local
Whitman-Walker, Us Helping Us awarded ‘Obamacare’ grants
‘We are excited to create these partnerships with trusted organizations that have deep roots in the communities that make up the District of Columbia’
Whitman-Walker Health and Us Helping Us were among D.C. community organizations to receive city grants under the federal Obamacare program. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Whitman-Walker Health and Us Helping Us, which provide health services to the LGBT community and people with HIV/AIDS, were among 35 D.C. community organizations to receive city grants this week to help people enroll in health insurance plans under the federal Obamacare program.
The D.C. Health Benefit Exchange Authority created by Mayor Vincent Gray and the City Council to implement the federal Affordable Care Act insurance program, known as Obamacare, awarded a combined total of $6.4 million to the 35 groups.
Whitman-Walker received $380,000, the second largest of the 35 grants. Us Helping Us received $85,000 in grant funds.
“We are excited to create these partnerships with trusted organizations that have deep roots in the communities that make up the District of Columbia,” said Diane C. Lewis, Executive Board chair of the Health Benefit Exchange Authority.
“The new health law offers essential benefits that will improve the health and security of the residents of our city,” Lewis said in a statement. “It is critically important that we have trained experts available to help ensure those benefits reach the people who need them.”
A statement released on Tuesday by the Health Benefit Exchange Authority says the grants, among other things, will support “rigorous training” of more than 150 people to enable them to become experts in helping D.C. residents and small businesses understand the complexities of the insurance exchange program and how to select an insurance plan best suited for them.
The insurance plans will become available on Oct. 1 through a website established by the authority called D.C. Health Link, the statement says. Insurance policies chosen under the program will take effect on Jan. 1, 2014, according to the statement.
“[T]he D.C. Health Link will soon offer insurance options to uninsured D.C. residents, many of whom are LGBT community members,” said Don Blanchon, Whitman-Walker’s executive director. “Now, with these grant funds, WWH will hire 3-4 additional employees to help these community members navigate their insurance options and choices,” he said.
“This grant will allow WWH not only to help current patients without insurance but also reach out to the broader LGBT community across the city,” Blanchon said.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
JD Vance to travel to Hungary next week
Pam Bondi ousted as attorney general
VIDEO: Gay journalist detained for booing Trumps at ‘Chicago’ opening night
Idaho Gov. signs harshest anti-trans bathroom bill in the country
‘Out for McDuffie’ event held at D.C. gay bar
‘Jonah’ an undeniably compelling but unusual memory play
The Oscar-losing performance that’s too good to miss
Thousands attend ‘No Kings’ protests in D.C.
